postulate may be shown by the explanation of mental phenomena which it furnishes, the vice is, that the process of verification is itself possible only by assuming the thing to be proved. But now, recognizing the indissoluble cohesion between the consciousness of _self_ and an unknown _not-self_, as constituting a dictum of consciousness which he is both compelled to accept and is justified by analysis in accepting, it is competent for the inquirer to consider whether, setting out with this dictum, he can base on it a satisfactory explanation of what he calls knowledge. He finds such an explanation possible. The hypothesis that the more or less coherent relations among his states of consciousness, are generated by experience of the more or less constant relations in something beyond his consciousness, furnishes him with solutions of numerous facts of consciousness: not, however, of all, if he assumes that this adjustment of inner to outer relations has resulted from his own experiences alone. Nevertheless, if he allows himself to suppose that this moulding of thoughts into correspondence with things, has been going on through countless preceding generations; and that the effects of experiences have been inherited in the shape of modified organic structures; then he is able to interpret all the phenomena. It becomes possible to understand how these persistent cohesions among states of consciousness, are themselves the products of often-repeated experiences; and that even what are known as “forms of thought,” are but the absolute internal uniformities generated by infinite repetitions of absolute external uniformities. It becomes possible also to understand how, in the course of organizing of these multiplying and widening experiences, there may arise partially-wrong connexions in thought, answering to limited converse with things; and that these connexions in thought, temporarily taken for indissoluble ones, may afterwards be made dissoluble by presentation {214} of external relations at variance with them. But even when this occurs, it can afford no ground for questioning the test of indissolubility; since the process by which some connexion previously accepted as indissoluble, is broken, is simply the establishment of some antagonistic connexion, which proves, on a trial of strength, to be the stronger—which remains indissoluble when pitted against the other, while the other gives way. And this leaves the test just where it was; showing only that there is a liability to error as to what _are_ indissoluble connexions. From the very beginning, therefore, to the very end of the explanation, even down to the criticism of its conclusions and the discovery of its errors, the validity of this test must be postulated. Whence it is manifest, as before said, that the whole business of explanation can be nothing more than that of bringing all other dicta of consciousness into harmony with this ultimate dictum. * * * * *